Settled in the 17th century. A convent in a small town is being visited by high-ranking Catholic official trying to exorcise the nun supposedly possessed by demons. A local priest have been burnt for creating this condition by sexual temptation of the nuns, especially the Superior Mother who bring on the collective hysteria of the group. Another young priest helps with the exorcism. His first meeting with the convent head, Mother Joanne of the Angels, has her seemingly possessed by Satan - she yells blasphemies and incites the priest. She begs the priest to save her and to help her to be a saint. In order to help her, he kills two innocent people to be forever a prey of the devil, and thus allow her freedom.

A landmark of Polish cinema, MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS depicts the struggle between earthly and divine pleasures. Kawalerowicz was one of the great Polish directors, and his experimental psychological portrait of the priest assigned to exorcise Mother Joan in the aftermath of the events depicted in Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS stands as his greatest achievement. A spare, profoundly disturbing exploration of faith, repression, fanaticism, and Eros, it won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1961, and in screening at St. John on Bethnal Green boasts the perfectly appropriate context for an unbearably intense study of a troubled man struggling to maintain his faith.